Did you 'run the world'?

[Trickyvee]

This memory has only come back to me having seen Little Britain's Andy and Lou characters, with Andy's 'I ran the world' T-shirt! I too ran the world with my best friend. We ran around the block 20 times and got chased by a pack of dogs (a common feature on housing estates in the 80s), but what was this all for? I think I remember having some sort of sponsorship form, and I think we made our own sashes to run in. We drew the Africa outline with the guitar handle, but surely this was the logo for live aid? I feel really bad that I can't remember what running the world was for. Please refresh my memory!

[kazboot]

Re: Did you 'run the world'?

Sport Aid

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Sport Aid (also known as Sports Aid) was a charitable event held on May 25 1986, raising millions of pounds to support famine relief in Africa, and is the sporting event with the most participants in history.
The event was organised by Bob Geldof, also the driving force behind Band Aid (1984) and Live Aid (1985), and took place in 78 countries simultaneously. At 15:00 GMT on Sunday May 25 1986, tens of millions of participants around the world ran, jogged or walked 10 kilometres with sponsorships or donations given to support African famine relief charities.
274 cities held official events to allow over 20 million participants to follow designated courses with television coverage shown worldwide. London saw 200,000 runners complete the course, and Barcelona hosted 50,000. In addition countless millions of further runners set out at the same time to run around their local village or park, or simply to take part in this global event. Only in the United States was the event a comparative failure, due in part to its clash with the better-publicized Hands Across America, and only 4,000 took part in the New York event.
Sport Aid was not very well known in United States because it happened on the same day as the better publicized Hands Across America, a nationwide fund-raiser for the hungry and homeless. Sport Aid was scheduled to take place at the beginning of a UN special session on Africa, and so the timing conflict with Hands Across America could not be avoided.
A central event was the lighting of a symbolic torch at the United Nations by Omar Khalifa, a champion Sudanese runner to signal the start the 10K races around the world. Mr. Khalifa began his journey to the United Nations on May 16, when he lit a torch from the embers of fire in El Moweilih relief camp in the Sudan. He was then flown to 12 European capitals, running through each and being greeted by leaders like Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II.
The New York Times reported, “With 200,000 Londoners setting the pace, more than 20 million runners in 76 countries ran today in Sport Aid, a global benefit to raise money for the starving of Africa.” Today, Sport Aid is still the biggest sporting event ever organized.
A video that documented the 1986 effort: "Sport Aid - The Race Against Time" - includes the music of The Cars, Tears for Fears, U2, The Police, The Hollies, Band Aid, Vangelis - featuring Sebastian Coe and a cast of millions! Running time 40 minutes - dated 1986
Two charity singles were released in the United Kingdom to publicize and raise money for the event: the Tears for Fears song "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" was re-recorded as "Everybody Wants To Run The World" in 1986, and Status Quo re-recorded their "Rockin' All Over the World" (which they used to open at Geldof's 1985 Live Aid concert in London) as "Running All Over the World" in 1988

[Trickyvee]

Re: Did you 'run the world'?

Thanks for the info. I knew it must have been related to the live aid stuff somehow! Obviously we didn't quite manage 10k doing 20 laps of the block, but atleast we were in synch with the rest of the world. It was very hot and sunny that day too. We got sunburned for our efforts and spent the aftermath eating ice lollies and being smothered in calamine lotion!

[Richard1978]

Re: Did you 'run the world'?

My brother had a "Running All Over The World" T-shirt in 1988.